Portal:Toxic Sludge/Featured Hero

 The Food Rights Network Salutes Acclaimed Documentary Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia for Standing Up to Sludge 

At the national "BioCycle" conference on April 12, 2011 in San Diego, Deborah Koons Garcia bravely spoke out against the sewage sludge industry's efforts to pass off sewage sludge as great compost for gardens and farms. Koons, who directed the acclaimed film "The Future of Food" and whose newest film is "Symphony of Soil," had been asked to be give a keynote address by BioCycle due to her study of the amazing work of soil in our food and ecosystem.

When Garcia discovered that BioCycle promotes growing food in sewage sludge--which is the industrial and human waste flushed down the drains and which contains hazardous substances like flame retardants, metals, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceuticals--she gave a keynote address to the conference opposing this practice and expressing concerns about the effect of this contamination on soils and land. She also condemned BioCycle's effort to smear organics advocates.

Organics advocates also attended the Biocycle conference to demand a retraction from Sally Brown and Nora Goldstein of BioCycle magazine, who called non-violent organics advocates exercising fundamental first amendment rights "ecoterrorists."

Sally Brown also spoke at the BioCycle conference. She is a non-tenured "research associate professor" at the University of Washington, who receives grants to write about sewage sludge and promote it. Her column in the March 2011 issue of BioCycle magazine attacked as "ecoterrorists" the Organic Consumers Association, the Food Rights Network and others who led the successful campaign that stopped the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission from giving away sewage sludge as "organic" compost for home and school gardens.

Brown wrote: “Here, six ecoterrorists have the City of San Francisco quaking in its boots, leading officials to stop a compost giveaway program that was making hundreds happy." Climate Change Connections: "Compost Security." Brown, Sally, BioCycle Magazine, March 2011. Brown pushes the growing food in sewage sludge, which she calls by the PR term biosolids.  Her sludge promos have included feeding people food grown in Seattle's own sewage sludge) "compost" product called GroCo.